The future of up cycling in Genk!

This week I visited the first of two meetings organised by the city of Genk. The goal of these ‘inspirational sessions’ is to gather the local initiatives that participated during the ‘Iedereen Fixt’-campaign last summer in order to brainstorm about future perspectives of local upcycling initiatives. In the end conclusions will be written down in a manifest (how cool is this!). As said in a previous post the local government thinks upcycling might be a great stepping stone on the path to a circular and thus sustainable economy. Rather ironicly the event took place in a former and completely abandoned ‘Esprit’-clothing shop… (For text in Dutch see below, zie onderaan een tekst in het Nederlands).

This first meeting was all about inspiring each other. The 20 attendees got classified in two different groups, while everyone got 20 minutes to inspire another attendee about an interesting upcycling project. Afterwards all these different projects were presented, compared and abstracted in these groups.

I got in a very interesting talk with Frank Maleszka from Stebo (an organisation of all sorts of community builders), who talked about an exhibition about upcycling he organized in Genk. Subject of the expo was Brussels based collective Rime & Fish that’s known for producing very well designed and rather upmarket objects out of second hand items. For Frank this expo showed a very imported but contested insight into the future of upcycling: people should buy items because of their esthetics and/or their usefulness, not because they are upcycled!

In other, quite paradoxal, words: In order to make a future out of upcycling, upcycling itself should become a non-issue!

Other attendees told inspiring stories about the(ir) repair café, pass on shop, second hand shop De Koop, Media and Design Academy LUCA, Absolutely Free Festival and a bicycle repair shop. After comparing and making abstraction of all these great initiatives we stumbled upon the essential ingredients or caracteristics of (future) projects. To start a sustainable initiative (often on a voluntary basis) one must be fundamentally passionate, creative and eager to participate, co-create and cooperate. Both on the producers’ and the buyers’ side people have to be conscious and have to learn to look at things with a different state of mind. Goods, like most of the people know them, are new when directly coming from a box/store. Upcycled goods that can be categorized as ‘new new’ are both old and new at the same time (with added value in each new life cycle) when they symbolize a circular system. To establish such a system, one must put effort in creating ‘space’ – both mentally and physically- for these products, producers and buyers within or outside the existing system. Also, almost all the attendees put emphasis on marketing these ‘new new’ products to make them commercially viable. In the end, when an upcycled item is finished experience taught that the result for the producer is a feeling of proudness and for the potential buyer one of surprise and inspiration.

The next meeting will be about dreaming! How should the city look like in 3 years? Will it be a more sustainable space to live and co-create in? How can we achieve these dreams? Looking forward (to reporting)!

I'm Art, born, raised and living in Genk, Belgium. This beautiful multicultural city, built on coal mining and a heavy assemblage and chemical industry currently is switching to a flemish hotspot for sustainable innovation. The goal of this blog is to give you an insider's view about local sustainability initiatives.